Music in Motion: Marketing Assignment

To market to our younger audience, Music in Motion will print promotional stickers. Stickers have several advantages as a marketing tool. To begin with, they can be printed in bulk for a relatively cheap cost. Companies such as U-Printing (http://www.uprinting.com/sticker-printing.html) Offer 1,000 stickers for a $78.00 charge. Also, stickers virtually create walking advertisements as soon as they are placed on clothing, backpacks, etc. The more exposure our name gets in the community, the more probable people will be to purchase our product. Music in Motion will distribute the stickers to agencies such as doctor’s and dentist’s offices to offer as prizes after checkups. We will also offer the stickers after our parent-child demonstrations, as free takeaways.

In an effort to reach our parental audience, we will print and mail brochures providing information about how to get one’s child involved in the arts. These brochures will contain information about different artistic genres and about how to introduce basic artistic concepts into a child’s everyday life. We will establish a joint promotion relationship with local community centers and school-funded programs; we will plug their names into our brochures if they return the favor by posting our flyers at their locations. The brochure will also suggest Music in Motion as a great way to get kids interested in the arts and will include a flyer for our free parent-child product demonstration. The 8 ½” x 11” brochures and flyers on Printingforless.com (http://www.printingforless.com/brochures.html) cost about $390.00 for every 250 printed. These materials are printed in four colors and have a front and a back side. Music for Motion would then mail these flyers and brochures to potential customers after purchasing a mailing list. According to an estimate on http://www.alescoleads.com/index1.cfm?StartFuseAction=SysCommon.StartNewList&listcode=ACC, a mailing list of 5,000 names in our target audience would cost about $450.00, or $22.50 for every 250 names. A single stamp is currently sold at 41 cents, which translates to $103.00 per 250 brochures mailed. Overall, the brochures would cost $515.50 per 250 copies mailed.

To attract both attention and potential customers, Music in Motion will host a free “Music, Motion, and You” workshop for both parents and children. The workshop will target two groups, both children in the appropriate age group and the parents of those children. The workshop will last for 90 minutes and will take place in a local community center. During the workshop, parents and children will be divided to participate in separate activities. Parents will attend a 45-minute speech about Music in Motion and will receive advice on how best to work with their children. The speech will be delivered by a member of the Music in Motion team and will focus on the benefits of concept based learning and parent-child interaction. During this time, the children will be in a separate area where other members of the Music in Motion team will lead activities and games. Of course, all these activities will center on the product and will focus on getting kids excited about the CD/book set.

The second half of the workshop will reunite parents and children. Together, they will travel to stations that have been set up around the room. Each station will be lead by a Music in Motion team member and will demonstrate one of the more difficult activities (as seen in our product). This allows the parents to see how the system works in real life while the children will have fun and get excited about the product. As some families may not have time to stay, we will offer the second half of the workshop as a strongly encouraged option. As an incentive for staying the full 90 minutes, the potential customer will receive a coupon for 10% off the CD/book set. Conveniently, the CD/book set will be available for purchase throughout the workshop at a table near the exit. After the workshop, to encourage parents to stay and talk with each other and with Music in Motion team members, we will provide juice and healthy snacks. The goal of the “Music, Motion, and You” workshop is to get 30 to 40 parents to attend and to sell at least 15 CD/book sets. We also hope to get at least 20 people to sign up for our e-mail list.
The total cost of this workshop would be $150.00 and 29 hours of work by Music in Motion team members. The breakdown of the cost is as follows:
-Space Rental: approximately $100
Source: http://www.urbanaparks.org/facilities/47.html
-Juice and Healthy Snacks: approximately $50 (unopened juice can also be stored for future events)
Source for prices: http://www.peapod.com
2 veggie platters with dip + 2 bags of pretzels + 6 big bottles of juice (3 apple, 3 grape) = $47.70
-Planning- 3 people, 3 hours each = 9 hours
-Set Up/Clean Up- 4 people, 1 hour each = 4 hours
-Workshop- 8 people, 2 hours each = 16 hours

Teachers are another very important audience for Music in Motion. One way to market this product to teachers is to place advertisements in educational journals and magazines. The cost of placing an advertisement can vary depending on the publication and the size of the ad. For example, a half page advertisement in Education Week, a weekly publication that reaches teachers and administrators across the country, costs $5,811.00 for a one time appearance. The cost can be less if the ad is scheduled to run more than once. The same half page advertisement in the Illinois Music Educator, a publication that reaches all Illinois Music Educator's Association members, only costs $205 for a single appearance or $185.00 per ad if it appears in three issues. While advertising in the Illinois Music Educator is much cheaper, it also only reaches a very specific group. Advertising in Education Week reaches a vast and varied audience. The additional costs involved with advertising in Education Week could be worth the investment since the ad would reach a much larger group. In addition to the cost of placing the advertisement, the cost of hiring a graphic designer to create the ad also must be factored in. Overall, placing advertisements is a very expensive undertaking but has the potential for huge returns.

Another way to reach teachers, especially local ones, is to have in-house demos. A Music in Motion team member will go into a classroom and will introduce the program with the students. This will give the teacher an opportunity to see the students engaged and excited about Music in Motion. The benefit to this type of marketing is that there is no cost involved at all. In terms of time it is a relatively small investment, as it would take one person about an hour plus the time spent traveling to the school. If each team member gave 5 in-house demos a week, Music in Motion could reach 60 teachers and all of their students within a month.

Collaborators: Alyssa Schoeneman and Meagan Roloff